Across the United States, the capitalist class has intensified its offensive against immigrant workers and the working class in general. This offensive includes brutal attacks and tactics of detention, deportation, and police violence. By maintaining a large section of the working class in an uncertain legal status, the bosses use this as blackmail to create and keep in line a hyper exploited section of the working class. And by hyper exploiting some of the most socially and politically vulnerable sections of the working class, the ruling class seeks to undermine the collective strength of labor as a whole, using immigrant labor as a way to drive down wages; a favorite tactic used by the capitalist class historically.
In recent months, this offensive’s intensity has increased including a large wave of deportations and detention. Sheet metal apprentice and union member Ábrego García was deported to El Salvador in March under the Alien Enemies Act, a law historically used during the First Red Scare to criminalize and deport unionists. That same month, farmworker and labor organizer Juárez Zeferino was arrested by ICE in Washington State, sparking protests from local unions but receiving no broader mobilization from national labor leadership.
These attacks are not isolated cases. They reflect a broader campaign of intimidation and repression against immigrant workers. Yet the response from the established labor leadership has been largely defined by silence. In some cases, such as that of Teamster’s President Sean O’Brien, union leaders have openly promoted nationalist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. This response is a clear example of the opportunism and collaboration with the capitalist class that characterizes much of the union leadership in today’s labor movement.
We need a labor movement that fights for the lowest paid, that unites all workers internationally regardless of the “legal status” imposed on them by the bourgeois legal system!
In response to these escalating attacks, the Class Struggle Action Network (CSAN) is launching an Immigrant Worker Solidarity and Defense campaign. The aim of this campaign is to organize a combative, class-struggle solidarity initiative and defense of immigrant workers grounded in principles of class unionism.
First, CSAN is working to pass solidarity resolutions in unions and worker organizations across the country. These resolutions are a necessary first step to confronting and overcoming the opportunism of union leadership and putting immigrant defense on the agenda within the unions. As part of this effort, CSAN is reaching out to hundreds of contacts across the network to build support for the resolutions and coordinate their introduction into locals.
Second, CSAN is undertaking a broad agitational effort to raise awareness, sharpen our collective understanding of the situation, and to point the way forward. Thus moving workers into action to connect and organize for the defense of their worker brothers and sisters regardless of whether they are native or immigrants. This effort includes the production and distribution of leaflets, pamphlets, and digital materials to expose the capitalist classes’ assault on immigrant labor and challenge the complacency of union leadership. These materials will put forward the needed anti-capitalist analysis on the situation of immigrant workers and the working class to ground the work of this campaign and point to the necessity of class unionism in our defense.
Third, CSAN is organizing to build or strengthen existing Immigrant Worker Defense Committees in cities where CSAN has an active presence. Including Chicago, Portland, and Richmond, Virginia. These committees will engage in ongoing education work, outreach to immigrant-led labor organizations, and coordination of demonstrations and solidarity actions. Their work will also include organizing responses to arrests and detentions of immigrant unionists and workers, ensuring that no attack on immigrant labor goes unanswered.
With an eye for the formation of a class unionist united front, we are also committing to active coordination with those already organizing along these combative, class unionist lines within the labor movement.
To advance this campaign, we invite those in agreement who are union members, unorganized workers, and class struggle militants to get involved. You can support this effort by introducing resolutions in your union local, joining or forming a defense committee in your city, contributing to agitational work, and connecting CSAN to those organizing along similar lines.
If you are interested in getting involved, please contact the network via email at class-struggle-action@proton.me, or join us at the next CSAN General Meeting, where coordination for this campaign will occur on an ongoing basis.
The repression of immigrant workers is a strategy by the ruling class to divide and weaken the entire working class. By targeting those with the least legal protection and the most precarious conditions, the bosses create a tiered system of labor where fear enforces exploitation. The silence of business union leadership in the face of these attacks deepens the crisis of labor. Our response must be clear and uncompromising: the working class is one class, and its defense must begin with its most exploited. This campaign is a step toward building a labor movement rooted in combativity, class struggle, and internationalism. We call on all workers to take up this fight!
